The magic of reading to children

Have you ever read to a child? Picked up a book and introduced a fledgling imagination to a brand-new world? If you have, you know one immutable truth: something magical happens.

If you haven’t, get ready. Seize the day this week as the nation prepares to celebrate Family Literacy Day Jan. 27.

There are plenty of chances locally as well to share the power and appeal of a book with a young person. Libraries up and down the Valley have events designed to encourage this vital exchange and there’s a web address at the bottom of this item to help you get there.

I think the Internet and other electronic means to access information is fantastic, but books are still the number one choice for me. They’re repositories of fact, fiction, fun and adventure, where animals can talk, dragons fly, words come to life and mystery abounds. I get a great kick out of reading to our two children, whose tastes couldn’t be more divergent but whose interest in the written word is unflagging.

Our six-year-old daughter is into any story involving a princess, of course, and she lives for a happy ending. However, she’s also in love with the Geronimo Stilton adventure series, even though she says candidly that some of the tales of the ‘famouse’ newspaper editor are a tad intense.

She wrings her hands as the action rises and squeals happily when the starring rodent triumphs and the ne’er-do-wells receive their just desserts. Cheese niblets! I say. It’s a hoot-and-a-half. Particularly since I hadn’t read any of these stories until she came home extolling their virtues and entreating us to track them down.

At nearly four, our big boy has a single request each night as we head to bed; two storybooks, please. One just isn’t enough, and I’m totally okay with that.

He thrills to animal tales, particularly ones that have interesting or predatory creatures. Lions, tigers, crocodiles and jaguars fascinate him, which I think is cool because I was that way as a boy, too.

We were reading a book called Look At Me that features a tiger, giraffe, frog, fish and a couple of other representatives of the animal kingdom. But there was a red salamander on a couple of pages, a creature without a starring role but prominent nonetheless, and it caught his eye. He can now say the word ‘salamander,’ and tells me its first appearance in the story is not a close-up, although if I turn the page we’ll get up front and personal real fast and then spend quite some time discussing its presence and capability.

I can’t imagine not reading to them, and that’s why I support Family Literacy Week. Kids need to hone language and literary skills at an early age because you and I both know it won’t get any easier later on down the line.

Our children will require effective communication skills to succeed in this crazy world and it’s incumbent on us to enable as many tools as possible.

So do your bit. It’s wonderful to watch a child absorb a story or poem and the effort we expend now to share a book is a huge investment in the future.

Want more information as to what’s happening on Literacy Day? Visit the ABC Literacy Foundation of Canada for a list of events: http://www.abc-canada.org/fld/events.shtml#ns. Happy reading!